Blood-red dots formed a line all the way down the hallway, as I wandered deliriously to the school office after getting hit in the temple with a baseball bat at recess. I was in grade 2. It left a scar – one I see every time I look in the mirror.
Scars – we carry them with us, be they from an accident, disease, or defeats in our personal or professional life. Scars are personal – they can be worn as a badge of honour or the battle that earned them can take the fight right out of you. For others, scars can forge a wiser perspective on how to fight.
In the messy democracy that is governance, introducing an idea that proposes to change the order of things is a steep hill to climb.
You will feel embattled in a world where consensus is only an idea, the angry voices yell the loudest, objectives are always conflicting, and too many want to be fighting the forest fires while you are thinking big picture about planting seeds for a new future.
In my 10-year experience working directly in government, I came to four facetious, “Dilbert”-esque realizations that helped me laugh off challenges and keep going:
1) It’s all about degree of lateness
2) Act dumber and people will ask for less
3) What you don’t know can’t hurt you
4) You can always hand it back and say “it’s too hard”
A sense of humour that enables you to not take road bumps too personally helps. Trust me.
When it feels like giving up is just a little bit easier, we become the Internet meme: Fight Apathy…Or Don’t. Add up enough folks who arrive at this juncture, and you have plodding performance that doesn’t live up to the powerful ability governance can have to change and shape lives for the better. It’s so easy to find drift. Then the years go by and in a moment of clarity much later in life you wonder why you wasted the opportunity to serve greatness, using your own unique talents.
My advice is this: don’t wait.
Feel the urgency to find your greatness (cue empowering Nike commercial), and to pursue the exceptional. Here are three guideposts that have helped me slide past my frustrations:
- Find your why. Call it your mission, your reason for being, or your legacy-building. Create a single picture of why you are putting up the fight. Perhaps it’s the face of your child, or an important mentor, or an act of grace or brilliance you have come across that inspires you to continue to always push to elevate your existence, and in doing so elevate the existence of others. When you hit a rough spot, visualize the picture that serves as your lightning rod – to remind yourself of your purpose.
- Put something on your wall – your call to action…your fight song. For years I had the words of Theodore Roosevelt’s – “Man In the Arena” speech (http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html) on the outside of my office door: “It is not the critic who counts…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement…The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Powerful stuff.
- Put your potential power into perspective – no matter how small you feel your contribution is or might be. Read about the butterfly effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect) … how your actions can amplify a change of condition globally given we are connected by systems. We can never fully understand how big things can be from the small things we do.
It’s been said that a river cuts through a rock not because of its power but because of its persistence. When life pushes you down, get back up. Fight, and rise. Put your beautiful butterfly wings into action. Why? Because the world needs so many more people like you.
Wear your scars with pride.